Is Yahtzee a noob?

[Kross]

Not that it's relevant to all games, but the one time Yahtzee visited our office, we all played some Rock Band at a party. And he's pretty damn good. Better then anyone here at the time on guitar at least. No that we're awesome, but a few of us can hold our own in Expert.

Spoiler: Me on drums, Funk on the mic, and Yahtzee on the axe

 

[Char12]

I agree in a way because in his Demons Souls review, he was saying how he couldn't even get past the red Dragon, I mean that bit isn't even hard. I dunno, it just kinda annoyed me a wee bit that he couldn't even get past the first world.

 

[Woodsey]

I get the impression that Yahtzee plays games from another time. He's probably not bad at games, but his strong suit isn't in genres such as modern FPS.

I know guys like that. They can break an RPG, but, if put a controller in their hand for a competitive FPS, they flounder pathetically.

Probably because you're making them use a pad for a FPS.

Zing!

[sub]If the OP's going to try and meaninglessly dick-wave I see no reason to not continue it.[/sub]


OT: I don't care, but I doubt he's particularly bad at games. Oh, and caring about narrative/story/characters/writing-above-a-10-year-old's-output doesn't mean you have to drop caring about another aspect (like gameplay).

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I don't think he's a noob. I also don't think he'll be touching Dark Souls, he'll most likely be slaughtering BF3 and absolutely infuriating it's rabid fanbase.



And it will be lulz.

Am I ever looking forward to the comments. He might even grace us with another mailbox showdown! XD

OT: I don't go by that definition. n00b means new player in my books. I'm terrible at puzzle games and that won't change but that doesn't mean I'm new to them. It just means I have different tastes in video games, like Yahtzee does. Unlike Yahtzee however I don't have a sweet hat or a rabid userbase to defend me

Not that it's relevant to all games, but the one time Yahtzee visited our office, we all played some Rock Band at a party. And he's pretty damn good. Better then anyone here at the time on guitar at least. No that we're awesome, but a few of us can hold our own in Expert.

Spoiler: Me on drums, Funk on the mic, and Yahtzee on the axe

Not new to Guitar Hero or Rock Band but I'm absolutely terrible at those games. I find them fun but if I'm playing with other people I will be hit with plastic instruments 5 minutes into the game session.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Frist thing, you don't need to say noob if you suck at one gerne of a game (simply say "I suck at game X").
Second thing, consider that he review a game after release date and have only a week to write a review about it (he doesn't have the luxuary to fully finish a game nor does he get to play a game before it's offically release), it's reasonable that he wouldn't be that far into a game amd have to make do what he had seen in order to review it.

 

[Lucem712]

It's sort of ridiculous to expect that of someone who has to try and get a full experience of a game in just a week, well probably not even a week, since he needs time to write the dialogue and record the review. Yahtzee doesn't have time to become the master of a game. I think he plays well enough in many genres to be a competent critic. And honestly, he's a critic, he isn't going to sugar coat it, he's looking for mistakes. I think we all forget that when he's bashing on our favourites.

 

[Mikeyfell]

You get a lot more context for Zero Punctuation if you read Extra Punctuation.

He disliked Demon's Souls for for the same reason I'm currently hating Dark Souls. No fucking checkpoints.

Every time you die you loose up to two hours of gameplay. Both games were designed for people with unreasonable patience.

For EG I died over 100 times on the first level. That is not how you hook new players. It might be the deepest, most enthralling, richest, best experience in the history of experiences, but it does not want to be played.
I played on a friends save where he was far enough in to have some armor and weapons and it was pretty fun. But dying 100+ times per level is not going to keep me entertained to see it through to the end.

 

[CRRPGMykael]

If you're talking about a specific game, then YES, we're all newbz when we play it for the first time and it's a genre we don't really give a fuck about or it has some mechanic that it takes time to get used to or the controls are different or something...
If you're talking about a specific game GENRE, then NO. I would imagine that after playing Thief, Yahtzee couldn't be called a noob anymore in those series, even the very first time he was playing through Thief II.
The reason he supposedly "sux" at modern FPS games is because he doesn't play too many of those, and neither do I. Is that really what you want to do with your life? Play a new CoD installment every year that is almost the exact same thing as the previous one? Or go out there, and explore the uncharted valleys of the massive game industry, and perhaps uncover a diamond gem, like Amnesia: The Dark Descent?

 

[LittleBlondeGoth]

The mild abhorrence of multiplayer is something that us slightly older gamers seem to harbour. When I was at school, I played Doom deathmatches with my friends at lunchtimes, and it was great (especially when I managed to get that great spawn point with loads of cover and a BFG). But now, fifteen years or so later, I'd much rather play co-op than head into a clusterfuck of people all doing their own thing.

Actually, you can probably scratch most of that. If I'm going to do multiplayer, I've always preferred playing with friends than with anonymous tags on a server. Even in those Doom-filled days, it was always against my mates and never online in the big bad world. I like the banter between people who know each other. These days I also prefer working tactically with a buddy than getting teabagged by a 12 year old with an attitude problem.

There's also the issue of players on one platform not being able to talk or join games with players on a different one. So if I bought an FPS for the PC and my mate Dave gets it for the PlayStation, we're probably not going to be able to play each other. But then on the flip side, if you do allow cross platform games, you'd have to consider the handicap between aiming via mouse on the PC and via console controller which often comes with an assist...

Oh, it's all too much hassle for me. I prefer my single player experiences. That way I don't have to deal with any other, you know, people.

 

[Jumpingbean3]

First off before people make a fuss let me explain my definition of noob. It doesn't mean a casual player, it just anyone that either is new to a game or isn't very good at it. Personally I'm a complete RTS noob, I've played it, I suck at it, oh whew is me, let's move on.

Anyways, after wondering about what game he should be reviewing come this Wednesday, I thought of Dark Souls which honestly I think is one of the best games I've played in a lonnnnggg time. I haven't been this enthralled and yet horrified (by how sheer difficult and nerve wrecking the game is) by a video games since I was 14 played Ghouls and Ghosts. But remembering how Yahtzee reacted towards Demon's Souls, it got me thinking. Right now I'm at Nito which is pretty far in Dark Souls, I ain't a gaming God, but I'm pretty sure Yahtzee couldn't even get that far (Capra Demon is far as he'd get I bet).

So after thinking about a lot of his reviews, how he can't stand MP, and how gameplay just doesn't seem to matter to him. Yahtzee from what I've understood is more into narrative and doing different things in games. Doesn't seem to have much interest in the competitive side. For instance the other example I brought up, he doesn't like MP. Now I know not everyone likes MP, and just because you don't doesn't make you a noob, but sucking at it is one reason a lot of people don't like MP.

So what's the point of asking what if Yahzee's a noob? Well the reviews he does for the games he has difficulty with matter. He trashed Demon's Souls for being hard, he never even attempts to objectively look into MP heavy games. In the end it really doesn't matter if he is a noob or not since he still makes really good observation into games now and then, but still. Is he?

=P

I think you need to look at his reviews again because he doesn't really have a problem with multiplayer itself, he just doesn't like it when games put all the focus on multiplayer because he feels a good single player usually has more lasting appeal (TF2 being the exception) and he talks about gameplay quite a bit (Bionic Commando, Deus Ex, Call of Jaurez (Don't know if I spelt that right), Splatterhouse and many, many more) and he's stated in the past that if he doesn't mention something in his review you should probably take that as something he didn't have a problem with it (plus, he's part critic, part comedian so being positive about something isn't that funny ). Also you have to keep in mind that Yahtzee is more of a critic than a reviewer and so his reviews are more subjective than objective and unless the game is really, REALLY bad he usually keeps the matter of whether the viewers should buy it up to them.

 

[Olivia Faraday]

Man, there's so many different kinds of games.

I'm incredibly good at CRPGs, JRPGs, turn based strategy games, platformers of both the Prince of Persia modern variety and the Super Mario 3 oldschool variety, idk, some other stuff. I'm incredibly BAD at first person games in general due to bad depth perception and motion sickness. I'm especially terrible at twitch style action games and anything that involves aiming, ammo, and chest-high walls is going to beat me up and take my lunch money. I had serious trouble beating Uncharted 1 on easy. Terrible at MP because the competitiveness stresses me out and works me up, etc.

I'm not a bad gamer, I'm embarrassingly bad at certain games and incredibly good at others. "Game" is not a universal definition. And I'd say that's about true for Yahtzee.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I don't think you're in a position to be judging anyone's gaming ability if you've never seen them play.

Newb = new player

Noob = ignorant player, somebody who blames others/the game for their lack of skill and/or uses game tactics that others frown upon, i.e., noobtubing.

agree on all parts

if you haven't seen someone play, let alone on a game to game basis (i owned at CoD but sucked at metro 2033 and killzone 2 for example) there should be no judgement passed on them.

noob =/= newb also

i haven't seen the guy play, nor do i really like his videos, but i seriously doubt this is up for debate and most literal points i've seen him make on games have some merit to them, if a game is hard then it's bloody hard, subjectively that is a good or bad thing in some people's books, so just take it with a grain of salt OP when seeing what he has to say about a game.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Why does it matter? As long as he makes entertaining videos i don't care.

 

[Bento Box]

First off before people make a fuss let me explain my definition of noob. It doesn't mean a casual player, it just anyone that either is new to a game or isn't very good at it. Personally I'm a complete RTS noob, I've played it, I suck at it, oh whew is me, let's move on.

Anyways, after wondering about what game he should be reviewing come this Wednesday, I thought of Dark Souls which honestly I think is one of the best games I've played in a lonnnnggg time. I haven't been this enthralled and yet horrified (by how sheer difficult and nerve wrecking the game is) by a video games since I was 14 played Ghouls and Ghosts. But remembering how Yahtzee reacted towards Demon's Souls, it got me thinking. Right now I'm at Nito which is pretty far in Dark Souls, I ain't a gaming God, but I'm pretty sure Yahtzee couldn't even get that far (Capra Demon is far as he'd get I bet).

So after thinking about a lot of his reviews, how he can't stand MP, and how gameplay just doesn't seem to matter to him. Yahtzee from what I've understood is more into narrative and doing different things in games. Doesn't seem to have much interest in the competitive side. For instance the other example I brought up, he doesn't like MP. Now I know not everyone likes MP, and just because you don't doesn't make you a noob, but sucking at it is one reason a lot of people don't like MP.

So what's the point of asking what if Yahzee's a noob? Well the reviews he does for the games he has difficulty with matter. He trashed Demon's Souls for being hard, he never even attempts to objectively look into MP heavy games. In the end it really doesn't matter if he is a noob or not since he still makes really good observation into games now and then, but still. Is he?

=P

No. Look.

Reviewers build a persona by writing reviews. In their first few works you get a sense of who they are and what they like. Their persona forms the basis of their reader/viewership, as the viewership majority will inevitably be people who agree with the reviewer most of the time.

Now, why is that important?

Yahtzee has made his interests and his peeves abundantly clear, and by now he has an established base of fans who either walk lock-step with him because they're mush-headed troglodytes, or who often seem to be walking lock-step with him because they would have agreed with him (albeit probably less viscerally) most of the time anyway. He likes a good story and some surrealist escapism. People who watch his reviews are largely in the same boat. I have a foot in the boat myself, despite my ongoing love for TF2 and my disdain for all survival horror games ever.

He's not a noob; he's jaded - my suspicion is that he is much like myself, in that he's old enough to have been saturated and bored of the entire mindless shooter genre, even before Halo came out and introduced the lowest common denominator to the multiplayer first-person shooter, thereby ensuring the ruination of the genre forevermore.

 

[The Funslinger]

He stated in his Mailbag Showdown that he is not the best player but would be above average just for the fact that he plays games as a living. He sees himself as an "everyman", so if he is having trouble playing it, that's trouble for others.

Yeah, this is fair enough. Plus, of course he'd complete Dark Souls. To actually review a game, you have to play through it. It's part of the reason he doesn't want to do a review series indefinitely, because having to breeze through the games like that drains the fun. So he can get through games quickly and objectively. What's your complaint here? Dislike =/= refusing to do. In fact, "I got up to X, which he totally couldn't do!" just comes off as stroking your e-peen.

 

[Carnagath]

If he trashes Dark Souls for being pretty much inaccessible to all but the most complete masochists, then he'd be right. I don't see why it should matter to you if you are one of them (us) who enjoy it. I don't expect him to get far, I wouldn't either if I was forced to play a game like that in order to review it, this is not the type of game that can be completed out of professionalism, it will break you if you don't go into it expecting to get smashed and with plenty of time, you can't power through it for the purposes of a weekly review. I think he'll just do a "first impressions" thing, which is fine by me.

 

[aretelio]

Are people still running around calling each other 'newbs' or 'noobs'? Seriously? I would've thought that those terms would've been replaced by shiny new ones by now. Christ, am I old.

 

[Xariat]

is he a "noob"? no he's not, he have been playing games for years, and is far beyond that point.

is he a great player? i doubt it, by the looks of it he doesn't really try to get better either, i remember he kept saying the first person view on mirrors edge was making the game hard and frustrating, but i breezed through mirrors edge on the hardest difficulity and thought it was kinda easy....

 

[Mrmac23]

The reason he hated Demon's Souls is because it was too hard. I don't mean "challenging" "fun" hard, i mean "ball-crushingly" hard. And from what i've heard, Dark Souls actively goes out of it's way to destroy your self worth and piss on you. I think i'm asking the same question as he would when i ask how the fuck anyone likes this sort of game. The reason I Wanna Be The Guy was so popular was because it was taking the piss out of difficulty by making everything nonsensically insane. Dark Souls is I Wanna Be The Guy when trying to take itself seriously. Read: annoying as shit.